Spider-Man’s First Appearance Sells for $1.1 Million

It’s official: Spider-Man beats Batman. Well, when it comes to auction, that is.

A copy of Amazing Fantasy #15, the first appearance of Marvel Comics’ web-crawling super-hero from 1963, has sold for $1.1 million in auction, beating Detective Comics #27, Batman’s first appearance from 1939, to become the second most expensive comic ever sold (Suitably, Superman’s first appearance in 1938’s Action Comics #1 remains in first place; a copy sold last year for $1.5 million).

The Amazing Fantasy was sold by online auction site ComicConnect.com and, as CEO Stephen Fishler explains, represents a milestone for the era it comes from:

The late 1950s and early 1960s are considered the Silver Age of comic books. The sale of this book crushed all previous records. Up until today’s $1.1 million sale, the record sale price of a comic book from this era was $250,000.

In fact, it wasn’t until last year that vintage comics were selling for this much; the million dollar mark was first broken in February 2010 by buyers for both Action and Detective. This massive sale for the original Spider-Man story, however, represents the first appearance for a Marvel Comics character in this kind of price range – pretty impressive, considering it’s almost 30 years younger. Guess someone really, really liked Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark.